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But there's one major problem: you can't change the type of an input-tag that has type password... If you could, that wouldn't be secure, right?
If you're planning to do so, you'll find out that'll remain buggy after all.

I wouldn't advise it anyways...
Maybe you can use JS to replace the input with [parent].replaceChild([textInput], [passwordInput]).

An approach from the different end..

I'm also only learning Javascript, but I think I can offer an alternative solution for the problem. Since you cannot create new input elements and set or change their type attribute value in any way in IE why not write some extra markup in the HTML and swap the password element for a text input and the other way around when needed? Then in the end you may want to errase the extra fileds, or process the form data on the server side accordingly..

<label for="password">Password: </label>
<input type="password" id="password" name="password" class="password" /><br>
<input type="text" id="password_alias" value='' class=" password shadow"/>
</form>
</body>
</html>
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extra helper tags are identified by the "whatever_alias" id and class="shadow"
puts them off screen initially.
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I use some of the utility functions I learned from: The Javascript Antology. This is far the best book on this topic I have ever read!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------all javascript functions are in: labels.js